


You Were Touching My Arm

by Skeiler



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Captain America: The First Avenger, M/M, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-14
Updated: 2015-03-14
Packaged: 2018-03-17 20:35:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3542969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skeiler/pseuds/Skeiler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky has a memento of Steve that he doesn't want to fall into HYDRA's hands if he's captured.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Were Touching My Arm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Odsbodkins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Odsbodkins/gifts).



Bucky wandered back to the center of camp from walking the perimeter. The night was silent and still. The kind of silence and stillness that made Bucky, a New Yorker born and bred, kind of nervous—no sounds of cars or even carts, no noisy neighbors fighting or the sound of Mrs. Calabretti singing opera songs while fixing dinner for her family. The only noise in the little camp was that of a crackling fire and a few whispered conversations drifting out of various tents. There was a rumor that a major German force was pushing towards their position outside Azzano, and everyone was anxious.

Around the fire, a small group of soldiers huddled together and whispered. Speculation flew fast and wild around the camp, and the CO’s exhortations to avoid any kind of wild hearsay had fallen on deaf ears. Bucky joined the small group, expecting more of the same. Instead he found the five men holding onto pictures and letters and feeding them slowly into the fire.

“What’s going on?” Bucky asked, perplexed.

“We’re getting rid of our personal stuff, in case we get captured, sarge,” Private Hartley replied.

“Why?” Bucky asked.

“In case we get captured by HYDRA,” Private Mayfield answered.

Bucky looked from man to man. “I seem to remember them telling us if we were captured the Germans couldn’t take our personal belongings, just our guns and military equipment.”

“Word’s gone around that HYDRA isn’t exactly following the Geneva Convention, sergeant,” another private, whose name was Arroyo, chipped in. Arroyo had an insolent bite to his manner of speaking that reminded Bucky of Steve Rogers. “That they’re not shipping POWs off to the stalags like the normal Germans.”

“So we’re burning our letters and pictures from home so there’s no chance those goddamn krauts can get their hands on them,” Hartley chimed in again.

“Makes sense,” Bucky replied as he took a seat near them. The five soldiers continued feeding their things to the fire slowly, stopping to peruse each one. To reread the letters from their sweethearts, wives, parents. To caress the pictures of their loved ones’ faces.

“My Betsy won’t be very happy when we get pulled back from the front and I have to write her for a new photo,” the quiet platoon RTO O’Shea commented before tipping the portrait of a buxom blonde from back home into the fire.

When the last of the group had finished consigning their possessions to the flames, the five privates started to get up. Mayfield and O’Shea started kicking dirt on the fire to put it out, but Bucky waved them off.

“I’m gonna sit up a while more,” he said. “I’ll make sure it’s out before I turn in.”

“Sure, sarge,” Mayfield replied as the five headed off to their tents.

Bucky watched them go until he was sure they were gone, listening to the sounds of the quiet camp under the dark canopy of trees. When Bucky was sure no one else was going to wander up to the fire, he reached into his coat and pulled out a worn folder frame. It had the logo for the Stork Club emblazoned on the front, the dapper little stork wearing its top hat at a jaunty angle. Bucky traced the outline of the bird with his finger and thought of all the times he and Stevie had talked about going there.

 _“When you get back we’ll go to dinner there,”_ Steve had said the night before Bucky had shipped out for basic training. _“You and me and Irma or Colleen or Kate or whoever you’re sweet on then.”_

Bucky had laughed. _“And a girl for you, one who can teach you how to dance.”_

They’d been standing on the fire escape outside Steve’s apartment, staring out at the glow of Manhattan on the other side of the river. Steve had suggested they go out that night, but Bucky had said, _“No, let’s stay in. I don’t feel like starting basic training with a hangover and sore feet.”_

So the two of them had drunk cheap beer and watched the comings and goings of their neighborhood. Bucky had savored the sights and sounds, weaving a thick blanket of memories to keep him going when he got to Europe. At some point, Steve had ducked back inside—even though it was summer, there was a cool breeze in the air and Bucky figured Steve had gone inside to find a jacket. When he’d come back out, he’d handed Bucky the photo frame.

The fire crackled as one of the logs split and fell, sending a cascade of sparks into the air. Bucky had no idea where Steve had gotten the folder from. He traced his fingers over the stork figure again, before opening the folder to look at the image inside. Steve had drawn it: a picture of the two of them sitting together at a table, Bucky in his Army uniform and Steve in a fashionable tuxedo. The picture was meant to emulate the photos of couples that the Stork Club sold for a dollar. Bucky had loved the simple gift more than any other memento he’d been given—by his mother, his sister, four of the girls he’d recently been out with. In the drawing, the two of them were sitting side-by-side, both leaning forward slightly. Their arms were touching, from the elbows up to the wrist, as they lay on the table’s surface. To the casual observer it was just a picture of two friends, but Bucky could feel the pressure of Steve’s arm against his and to his eyes the picture seemed intrusive, a little too revealing of the intimacy they shared.

Bucky’s fingers ghosted over Steve’s face, then trailed across to the facing page where Steve had scrawled an inscription:

_To Bucky. Save some glory for me. Steve_

The muscles in Bucky’s cheeks tightened as he thought of the last time he’d seen Steve, at the World Exposition. The way he’d stood at the entrance to the recruitment station, hair falling in those baby blues the way it always did. If HYDRA was what was waiting for him around the corner, he didn’t want to think about anything Steve had given him falling into their hands.

Bucky consigned the picture to the flames.

 

Epilogue:

The feeling was just coming back to Bucky’s feet. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d really _felt_ any part of his body. At some point during the poking and prodding of that fucking little HYDRA doctor, Bucky had just stopped registering any sensation and even though it worried him a little—okay, more than a little—that he’d been so absolutely fine on the walk back to the American camp, he’d been too focused on trying to wrap his head around the fact that skinny, sick little Steve was… Well, was Captain fucking America.

Feeling was coming back to his left arm, too, as it rested against Captain America’s in the darkness of their tent—unlike the prickling of cold in his toes, he felt nothing but the incredible warmth coming off Steve. He pressed his arm gently against Steve’s, making sure they were touching at every point possible from their shoulders down to the outer edges of their pinkie fingers. Steve’s breathing was so quiet— _so quiet_ —and even that Bucky figured he must be asleep, and was surprised when Steve hooked his little finger around Bucky’s.

They lay in their tent in silence for a long time, until Bucky finally whispered, “I had to destroy your picture.”

He felt Steve’s head shift to look towards him, but Bucky kept staring at the crease at the top of the tent.

“I didn’t want… them… to,” he started before the words just dried up in his mouth.

“It’s okay, Buck,” Steve said.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky whispered back. “It was the best present you ever gave me.”

“It’s okay,” Steve repeated. “Once we get done kicking every HYDRA goon in the pants from here to Berlin and everything’s back to normal, we’ll go home and get a real picture taken. And put it in a real frame.”

Steve sounded so sure that this would be their future that Bucky didn’t say anything. He just soaked up the unnatural warmth of his friend and tried to forget about the cold in his bones that just didn’t want to go away.


End file.
